Single Payer Health Care from Bill Moyers

"....Once upon a time, a young Barack Obama thought single-payer was the answer. Listen carefully:

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan.

BILL MOYERS: That was State Senator Obama, who said there was just one big obstacle standing in its way.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: We may not get there immediately, because first we've got to take back the White House, and we've got to take back the Senate, and we've got to take back the House.

BILL MOYERS: Fast forward six years. President Obama has everything he said was needed - Democrats in control of the executive and both houses of Congress. So what's happened to single-payer?

For one thing, as President, Obama is now looking for consensus, peace among all the parties. There was a big pow-wow in Washington last week. The president asked representatives of the health care business to reason together with him at the White House. They came, listened and promised to cut health care costs voluntarily over the next ten years.

Some of us looking on at this charm offensive - some of us who'd been around a long time - were scratching our heads. We've heard this call for voluntary restraint before.

Way, way back in the 1970's Americans were riled up over the rising costs of health care. As a presidential candidate, Jimmy Carter started talking about how the government would be clamping down...."

I did hear from my brother-in-law, Bob, and in an e-mail, from a retired radiologist from the University of Washington, who I met on the Crystal Symphony, through the Panama Canal.... they saw the program and heard the message. So logical, so right....so far away. We are asked to wait for evolution, while people die and the debt goes up, because we need consensus, in the face of a greedy seolf-interest that will bankrupt our nation.